Executives and managers can turbocharge an Agile Transformation...or stop it before it even starts. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering “how come they don’t get it”, then these games are for you.

In this exercise we’ll show you how to connect the critical values of transparency, autonomy, negotiability and responsiveness to Executive concerns like resource utilization, capital budgeting, risk analysis and annual planning. It starts with exploring and respecting the differences between approaches, the questions under the questions. It concludes with shared vocabulary, mutual understanding, and goals aligned. Let’s start seeing each other as runways, not roadblocks, on the journey to better organizations.

Have you heard about Design Thinking but unsure about where it all fits in with all these other buzzwords like Lean UX and Agile? Get your learn on with this creative journey through the lens of a dinner party. 

How many times have you sat through a brainstorm session and melted under the table only to hope you can crawl out the door with ninja-like stealth? Brainstorming doesn't have to suck, but sometimes it does because people have a hard time breaking out of their usual thought process. 

Blow up the brainstorm barrier with WWXD: What Would X Do?

WWXD is great for:

• Getting people to break down the barriers to creative thinking #outsideofthebox
• Getting people to laugh
• People who love superheroes from Winston Churchill to Iron Man
• Get people to think about what someone other than them would want. (People sometimes feel more comfortable sharing ideas in this way.)

Learn how to kickoff your next brainstorm session with a bang by getting teams to think like Wonder Woman, your mom, dad, Trump, Steve Jobs, or your favorite Kardashian. 

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? This exercise illustrates the language (verbal and non-verbal) and perspectives present when being an optimist or a pessimist.

Agile teams thrive when people of multiple disciplines—software development, testing, analysis, user experience, project management, product management—collaborate to deliver great products. But creating—and sustaining—a culture where true collaboration is possible is not easy.

Think about it for a moment. How transparent are your daily communications with team members? What steps have you taken to understand your teammates’ perspectives about what hinders or accelerates shared success in your daily work? How often do you converse—openly and deeply—with team members, especially those who hail from other disciplines? For most of us, our day-to-day interactions fall short of the ideals of honest communication, mutual learning and genuine curiosity.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Join us for “Can We Talk?” as we explore techniques to help us share the truth—without blame or judgment—with our colleagues. In this session, we dig deep to explore puzzles, patterns, and possibilities for more effective cross-discipline collaboration. In the end, you leave with a set of activities you can use to safely yet honestly engage with your whole team.

Are you afraid of scope creep? Or maybe you feel like you're always the one poking holes in someone's grand idea? We've got a workshop for you. The Pre-Mortem!

A Pre-Mortem is great for:

• Mitigating risk early and often
• Getting ahead of a problem before it occurs
• Preparing for the worst with proactive action
• Testing a solution before it’s even made it to the approval stage
• Realists, pessimists, and those that like to poke holes or play devil’s advocate

Learn how to take a backlog of ideas, features, or other solutions and put them to the test BEFORE an ounce of code or time has been spent. Mitigate your risks, bring pessimism and optimism together, and solve for an otherwise untold future. 

Games for Learning about Retrospection and New Idea Development

Presenter:​ Savvy Katham

Track:​ GameJam

Type:​ Interactive Game Play

Audience Level:​ All

Room Setup:​ Rounds

Duration:​ 60 minutes

Keywords:​ Play, Retrospection, Learning-game, New idea generation

Abstract: 

Agile execution has a time boxed delivery schedules. As teams swim through from one sprint to another, it is important to take a necessary break to retrospect how teams are doing. This little time spent with teams would help in a big way. Speed boat game helps teams to express their emotions and experiences on how the project is moving. This game brings out opportunities to look into, best moments that can be continued and wonderful things that can be put to rest.

In addition, this game can be played to bring out new ideas on product development too. However, the session focuses only on retrospection due to time constraints.

Our roadmap doesn't make sense. Our executive team is out of touch. Why does the CTO keep going on and on about X, when we know our customers just want Y? Wait, we have a roadmap? We should just make product Z - it would be so easy to do - so what if it doesn't fit into the company strategy? Why are we not making products that our customers are passionate about?

You've experienced at least one of these sentiments before. Am I right?

The Business Value Game is a fantastic tool to align and build consensus amongst stakeholders on any kind of strategic or tactical roadmap - from product roadmaps, to marketing strategies, to devops initiatives. 

I learned this game from Chris Sims at the 2014 Scrum Gathering in New Orleans, and have been using it for both feature roadmaps and product roadmaps, successfully aligning a diverse and stubborn group of stakeholders to work together for common goals.